Maxtor DiamondMax 9 vs. Western Digital JB

Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited December 2003 in Hardware
I've got 8 Maxtor DiamondMax 9 hard drives of varying capacities, and I just recently picked up a Western Digital JB. So, since there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer as to which one is faster, and since one of the Maxtors is in the same system as the WD is anyhow, I decided to benchmark them.

<ul>Test system:
<li>MSI Pro266TD-LR Dual P3 motherboard, Via Apollo Pro 266 chipset
<li>1 1.3GHz Celeron @ 1.5GHz (116x13)
<li>2 256MB Samsung PC2100 DDR @ CL2, 133MHz
<li>Transcend ATi Radeon 9000 128MB
<li>Hercules GameTheater XP
<li>Maxtor-badged Promise Ultra133 TX2 PCI Dual ATA-133 controller card
<li>Via-based 3 port PCI firewire card
<li>LiteOn 52/32/52 CD-RW
<li>Maxtor Diamond Max 9, 80GB/7200RPM/8MB ATA-133
<li>Western Digital "Special Edition" 800JB, 80GB/7200RPM/8MB ATA-100
</ul>

Test setup:
I simply ran ATTO on both disks; ATTO was run at the default settings, except the total length was changed to 32MB.

Both drives are the master devices on their respective buses. Both are connected to the Promise PCI card, and nothing else is connected to the card. The Maxtor drive is also the system drive, so that may have some impact on the results.

Regardless, here's the combined ATTO screenshots:

Comments

  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    And here's a graph comparing the two:
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited December 2003
    I'm not too familiar with these benchmark scores and what they mean so I need some sort of english translation.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    It means the Western Digital generally has better write times, and the Maxtor has better read times.
  • panzerkwpanzerkw New York City
    edited December 2003
    So the Maxtor would be better overall then, since HD's read more than they write?
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    The Maxtor is better, IMO, yes. It actually writes faster too, but only up to 16kb; the WD is faster for files >16kb.

    However, the Maxtor consistently reads faster than the WD. It looses @ 1024k, but only by a very tiny amount.
  • polarys425polarys425 Harrisonburg, VA
    edited December 2003
    it would be interesting to have the two drives loaded the same and tested that way on a nForce2 chipset. maybe just the OS and the benchies.

    Via isnt known for spectacular IDE performance.

    but like Geeky touched on, the Maxtor being a system drive could very well affect the read times between the two. as the two drives wont have have the same file sizes in the same areas of the drive. if i had a Maxtor, i'd give it whirl, but i think the last Maxtor i bought (years ago) was a 15 gig or so.

    still interesting though...
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    Polarys, like I said... it's not on the chipset IDE controller. They're both on a Promise Ultra 133TX2 PCI ATA-133 controller card.
  • polarys425polarys425 Harrisonburg, VA
    edited December 2003
    Geeky1 had this to say
    Polarys, like I said... it's not on the chipset IDE controller. They're both on a Promise Ultra 133TX2 PCI ATA-133 controller card.

    sorry.... i read that and let it completely slip.

    what i really should have touched on was the PCI latencies that via also had.

    but at any rate since both drives are tested in the same system it doesnt matter much.

    the only way to be more scientific is if both drives were loaded identically.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    Yeah. I did notice a few other strange things... the WD has a smaller formatted capacity than the Maxtor, and in SpeedFan, it's little "health" graph is not at 100%... more like 50-75%. This is a brand new drive... should I be concerned about that at all?
  • polarys425polarys425 Harrisonburg, VA
    edited December 2003
    im not really familiar with speedfan...what is it?
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    It's a program that monitors and controls various aspects of your system. It'll allow you to vary the speed of fans connected to motherboard headers (if your hardware monitoring chip supports adjustable voltage regulation), it'll allow you to change the FSB speed and such if your clockgen is supported, it monitors temps, voltages, fan speeds, etc., and it reports the status of your SMART hard drives.
  • EQuitoEQuito SoCal, USA
    edited December 2003
    polarys425 had this to say
    it would be interesting to have the two drives loaded the same and tested that way on a nForce2 chipset. maybe just the OS and the benchies.
    Even older Maxtor's with 2MB cache are faster, either as single drives or in RAID configuration.

    2 x WD800JB's 16/16 NTFS SATA RAID0 array:
  • EQuitoEQuito SoCal, USA
    edited December 2003
    2x Maxtor's 6E030L0 30GB same configuration:
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    My 2 80 gig JB's are on their way out of the window very soon. I'm thinking of picking up the new Samsung SATA.
  • EQuitoEQuito SoCal, USA
    edited December 2003
    Mackanz had this to say
    My 2 80 gig JB's are on their way out of the window very soon.
    Before they go out the window, packe'em up and send'em to me... :D
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    Well...you have had them already...remember? :D
  • EQuitoEQuito SoCal, USA
    edited December 2003
    Of course, and I also remember how much you paid for them... :banghead:
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    Mackanz, why the Samsungs? Just curious... I really like the DMax 9s... RAIDed, they're very fast. My 160GB DMax 9s in RAID 0 are a LOT faster than the ATTOs EQuito posted of his RAIDed JBs.
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    It's SATA, they are supposed to be the quietest drives around and they are cheap. I can get the 160GB SATA with 8mb in cache for $100. The board that i am eying out right now has 4 SATA wit h RAID 0. 4 of those would rock. And i would like to try something new.
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